We Walk Alone
by scorpionmother
Summary: Why did Ethan make the choice to leave Vanessa after she offered him her acceptance and her love. This is my take on his decision which broke my heart. It has given me a little closure. I hope it can provide the same to others.


He stands his forehead resting on the smooth wood of the door. On the other side sleeping peacefully for what must be the first time in forever lays his salvation. He can picture her in repose. She will be on her side facing the door, her ebony hair spreading fan-like round her beautiful visage. One delicate hand will be curled up around her marble cheek the other draped over her thin waist. Her dark eye lashes will lie moth like, sticky with the dried tears that he caused to fall, the purple veined lids blocking those eternal blue eyes that the last time he saw them open offered acceptance, peace, love.

The thick paper of the letter trembles in his grasp. He cannot believe that he is going to leave her with the hollow platitudes that his head forced his hand to spell out across the paper. Thanking her for her affection, for her friendship. The ink those words were written with should have been his heart's blood, which screamed in torture as he formed every letter. It took every ounce of his strength not to write the truth that he would walk with her, that he would stay tonight, tomorrow, forever; that he loved her. Only in the last line did he allow a hint of what throbbed soul deep since the moment he had pledged his life to hers. And yet this too now lay in tatters like his dreams of a future filled with her. He wrote the lines with love, he lied with love because to write the truth would commit her to a darkness blacker than any she had ever been in peril from before. He had not aided her escape from an eternity bound in evil to the prince of lies to spend what remained of her natural life chained to a monster – to him.

It had been wrong of him to let it develop this far, to let himself entangle his soul with hers so completely, to allow her to bond with him; but he had been too entranced with her to stop it. He had in her, seen a fellow sufferer and thought they could, together in some small way, ease each other's pain. But he had been selfish and had only caused her more suffering which he knew could only increase if he stayed. The sound of her words hissed during the storm on the moors after he had held her drenched and shaking form to his own and pressed his ravenous mouth to hers steeled his will, providing him with the excuse his tortured mind thrashed to find, to stop him from staying.

"We are dangerous."

They were he told himself. They were everything cruel and wild, the essence of nightmares and the unknown terrors that lurk in dark corners. Together they could overthrow the ultimate evil, creating in its place something even more terrible. Together they could bring about the destruction of the world and revel in its despair; glorying in the blackened dead realm the joining of their bodies and souls would birth.

And yet her light, that incandescent flame that pulsed through her even when she had been utterly possessed, almost overcome, provided him with the excuse to stay. In her he could find forgiveness, he could be atoned. By loving and protecting her, and in her love for him he could be saved.

"No."

His forehead pressed harder into the wood. He had to resist. His resolve teetered on the edge of a chasm. The nails of his hands dug bloody crescents into his palms. He knew that she deserved a life of peace not the hunted existence that was all he could ever offer her. Every fibre of his being demanded to see her just one last time. To fill his eyes, his very soul with the vision of her. To lay his hand one last time against the satin of her cheek. To press his lips into her hairline and lose himself in her wild scent.

His hand stretched almost involuntarily towards the doorknob his self-control almost in ruins but he snatched it back. He could run the scenario in his head one touch; one kiss would not be enough. He would sink to his knees beside her and enfold her in his arms. He eyes would open, a smile of welcome would stretch her mouth and he would be lost; in that moment he would never be able to leave her ensnared as he would be in the forged chains of her love.

Earlier as he had held her, their forms silhouetted against the gauzy curtains of her room, she had asked him to walk with her, offering him the promise that they could be less afraid and he had allowed himself a moment of belief. A safe, clean, white future where he made her his. A future in which he took her to his bed each night and loved her fiercely. completely. A future where his seed lodged in her womb to create children, their legacy of love. A future with her by his side until death. He had almost succumbed, as he looked deep into her eyes rubbing his thumbs over her face her body melded to his. He had felt her start to rise bringing her face closer to his, her lips opening to capture his trembling mouth. But at the last second had closed his eyes agains hers, turned his face away, had extracted himself as gently as he was able to from her arms, had turned his back on her so she couldn't see the despair in his face and he couldn't watch the hurt in hers.

"Forgive me."

It had escaped his lips without thought. A plea as much for what he had done, and by God he had done terrible things; but they paled into insignificance next to that he was about to do to her, the only woman he would ever truly love.

Her answer, to his ears a vow, rendered his shredded soul with claws sharper than his, but in some way the agony of her forgiveness was enabling him to take that lonely walk to the noose and the cold clay bed that awaits him.

His lips press in benediction into the wood that keeps him from her and then swiftly, without lingering he pushes the letter under her door and walks away from her. Inside he screams and his heart courses with tears of blood but his eyes stay dry, resolute.

At the front door he stops one last time to look at the image she created with her own blood on the metal. Her symbol of power and protection – the scorpion. It is faded now, the brightness of the blood dry and flaked. In what will be his final act of protection for her he bites down into the flesh of his thumb lacerating the pad, which oozes crimson. Gently he presses his torn flesh onto the place where the heart of a real scorpion should reside mixing his blood with hers in a union of pain.

As he walks away alone into the dying light of the day the realisation comes to him that death now holds no fear for him. For the path he has taken away from her has killed him already.


End file.
